We check out this premium-spec’d smartphone from realme.

realme isn’t a brand familiar to everyone, but it’s a company that’s been present in key areas in Asia and Europe. Just like its competitors, its aim is to deliver high-end hardware without breaking the bank. As part of the realme’s launch in the UAE, the X2 Pro brings all the top features you’d find on a flagship device at a 1,999 AED price.

The X2 Pro we have for review comes in a Neptune Blue color, which admittedly is a beauty especially when you use it outside in the sunlight. Other than that, it’s a typical smartphone design: metal sides and glass material covering the back and of course the screen itself. You have the usual fingerprints when touching the phone, so use a case. Thankfully, realme has included one inside the box.

Speaking of screens, the X2 Pro sports a 6.5-inch 2400-by-1080 pixel AMOLED display. Brightness peaks at 1000 nits and it’s immediately noticeable once you start playing HDR content, which it also supports. But nearly every smartphone now can support HDR and what makes the X2 Pro different is the 90Hz refresh rate. Scrolling web pages is smooth as butter and makes you wish all smartphone screens are like this.

Other hardware specifications include a Snapdragon 855+ CPU, 12GB of RAM and a 256 GB internal storage. That’s more than enough for you to install all those apps and even take images and video at a high resolution. Performance clearly doesn’t disappoint, thanks to the 855+ processor – games, apps, and rapid multitasking doesn’t even slow down the X2 Pro. The speakers also support Dolby Atmos and they are impressively loud, which makes the smartphone a great multimedia device.

The X2 Pro house a quad-camera setup that includes a main 64-megapixel camera, a 13-megapixel telephoto camera, an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. While all of these specifications look good on paper, the resulting images are a mixed bag. Images shot in daylight look great, preserving color and skin tone, but low light shots suffer. It’s not the best, but we could’ve expected an above-average camera to go with the high-end specifications. For selfie lovers, there is a 16-megapixel front-facing camera. For biometrics, face unlock and an in-display fingerprint scanner is included.

The X2 Pro runs on ColorOS 6.1, based on Android 9 Pie. All the basic functions are available, but I’m personally not a fan of the custom UI of ColorOS – it’s cartoonish and doesn’t fit well with the design aesthetic of the X2 Pro. Thankfully there are third-party launchers that you can use to somehow change the look of the interface.

The 4,000 mAh battery of the X2 Pro lasted for around 1.5 days before it needed another charge. This was based on my real-world usage that included the usual phone calls, messages, emails, and social media browsing. Considering that a high-end device can’t even last for a day, the X2 Pro’s battery is definitely impressive.

Just in case you run out of battery, the X2 Pro supports 50W SuperVOOC Flash Charge that literally charged the smartphone from 0 percent to a full battery in just 34 minutes – that’s one minute less than what realme claims so consider us impressed.

Overall, the realme X2 Pro joins the line of 2,000 AED smartphones that feature high-end specifications. It’s a beauty to look at, and its performance is impressive. If ColorOS and the camera were better, we’d be giving this our full recommendation.

Tech Enthusiast and Movie Buff. Passionate for all things tech - you’ll normally find him tinkering with the latest gadgets and computer peripherals. He is an avid collector of Blu-ray discs and occasionally plays on his Xbox.